<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head>
<meta charset="UTF-8">
<title>time's supposed to heal (i haven't done much of it) by troubadore</title>
<style type="text/css">

body { background-color: #ffffff; }
.CI {
text-align:center;
margin-top:0px;
margin-bottom:0px;
padding:0px;
}
.center   {text-align: center;}
.cover    {text-align: center;}
.full     {width: 100%; }
.quarter  {width: 25%; }
.smcap    {font-variant: small-caps;}
.u        {text-decoration: underline;}
.bold     {font-weight: bold;}
</style>
</head>
<body>
<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/25921201">time's supposed to heal (i haven't done much of it)</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/troubadore/pseuds/troubadore'>troubadore</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>The Witcher (TV)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Canon Compliant, Fix-It, Hopeful Ending, Implied Jaskier/Yennefer, M/M, Past Geralt/Yennefer, Post-Episode: S01E06 Rare Species, Pre-Relationship</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-08-15</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-08-15</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-05 03:48:15</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>1,445</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/25921201</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/troubadore/pseuds/troubadore</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>There’s a tight feeling in his chest, a pressing weight on him as a rush of feeling overcomes him when he sees Jaskier standing at the entrance of Kaer Morhen.</p>
<p>Their eyes meet for the first time since the mountain, and Geralt thinks they’re even bluer than he remembers. Perhaps it’s the light of the afternoon sun dappling in beams over the keep, or just that old adage of absence making the heart grow fonder, but his breath is stolen as he looks at his bard once again.</p>
<p><em>Not your bard</em>, he reminds himself harshly, dropping his gaze but unable to look away for long, not after so much time apart. <em>Not anymore</em>.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Geralt z Rivii | Geralt of Rivia/Jaskier | Dandelion</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>8</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>281</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>time's supposed to heal (i haven't done much of it)</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>for <a href="http://anxiousbard.tumblr.com">anxiousbard</a></p>
<p></p><blockquote>
  <p>24. you’re my ex but i think i still have feelings for you / 41. overhearing they have feelings for you</p>
</blockquote>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>There’s a tight feeling in his chest, a pressing weight on him as a rush of feeling overcomes him when he sees Jaskier standing at the entrance of Kaer Morhen.</p>
<p>Their eyes meet for the first time since the mountain, and Geralt thinks they’re even bluer than he remembers. Perhaps it’s the light of the afternoon sun dappling in beams over the keep, or just that old adage of absence making the heart grow fonder, but his breath is stolen as he looks at his bard once again.</p>
<p><em> Not your bard, </em> he reminds himself harshly, dropping his gaze but unable to look away for long, not after so much time apart. <em> Not anymore. </em></p>
<p>He watches those blue eyes go dim with a fresh wave of pain and heartache as they land on him, and then go wide when he sees Geralt's companion.</p>
<p>“Jaskier!”</p>
<p>Ciri rushes forward from his side, and Jaskier drops to his knees, arms open to catch her in a hug. He presses his face in her hair the same way Geralt had back in the forest where they found each other, holding something so indescribably precious in his arms.</p>
<p>The aching of his own heart intensifies.</p>
<p>"Oh, sweet girl,” Jaskier is murmuring to her, holding her tight while she buries her face in his neck. “I’m so glad you found him. It’s alright, it’s alright. You’re safe now.”</p>
<p>He’d forgotten Jaskier spent many winters after that disastrous engagement banquet back in Cintra's court, watching their little lion cub grow up. <em> One of us should be there for her, </em>he’d told Geralt once, a look in his blue eyes Geralt hadn’t been able to place.</p>
<p>He thinks now it might have been something like understanding, something like resignation. Always picking up the slack abandoned by Geralt in matters of Destiny.</p>
<p>He's always done more than Geralt deserves of him.</p>
<p>Those blue eyes that always make him feel simultaneously like he’s drowning and finding air after being underwater for too long find his again as Jaskier stands up, hands still on Ciri's shoulders, and then Jaskier turns away without a word and leads her into the keep.</p>
<p>The clenching in his chest cinches tighter and Geralt feels another piece of his heart crack and splinter, chipped away by his own doing.</p>
<p>Yen’s gaze, from where she stands beside him, burns into the side of his head. “You’re a real piece of work, Geralt of Rivia.”</p>
<p>With that, she moves away and heads into Kaer Morhen, and he watches yet again as the two halves of his heart leave him behind, one slightly mended by necessity, the other still raw and bleeding.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>He avoids jaskier for the first several weeks as winter sets in in earnest. It’s—more difficult than he expects. Kaer Morhen is large, but not large enough to keep Geralt from being in the same space as Jaskier, and he finds himself leaving rooms right after entering them when he sees his—<em>not his—</em>bard sitting at a table or curled in a chair, lute in hand, his voice warm and soft and gods, he’s missed it. Missed <em> Jaskier. </em></p>
<p>But he messed it up on that mountain. He fucked up the one good thing life had seen fit to bless him with—how could he have ever called Jaskier a <em> curse—</em>and he’s not sure it’s something he can fix.</p>
<p>So he avoids Jaskier to avoid having to face the consequences of his mistakes. Of this mistake in particular.</p>
<p>It doesn’t last.</p>
<p>He’s been trying to ignore the burn of jealousy in his veins when he catches Yen with Jaskier, both of them with their heads together and smiling and <em> laughing </em>together like old friends. Yen had said she and Jaskier had worked through their differences and come to an understanding sometime in the time between the mountain and now, but she’d never offered the details of their relationship.</p>
<p>The urge to put himself between them and pull Jaskier away, to crowd him against a wall and hide him from her gaze and focus all of that blue-eyed attention on himself is strong, and it takes a great amount of his carefully learned and honed control to keep it in check. He hates the envy spreading in him like toxins in his blood.</p>
<p>He finds himself lingering outside the door to the room Jaskier was given, hand poised in the air as if to knock or push his way in, <em> wanting </em>to, wanting to be let back in, but never going through with it. He listens instead, from the hallway, to Jaskier singing softly or muttering nonsense to himself as he goes about his nightly routines. It’s familiar, calming, something he did on the road with Geralt, and Geralt feels something in him settle knowing Jaskier hasn’t changed much at all.</p>
<p>Occasionally, he’ll be talking to someone—Ciri, usually, or Yen, or Eskel or Lambert—and Geralt burns with the desire to be the one he talks to, to be given the honor of keeping him company, even if he’s proven he’s not worthy of Jaskier time and time again. He wants Jaskier back, but he’s not sure <em> Jaskier </em> wants <em> him </em> anymore.</p>
<p>It's a night like this, Geralt lingering beyond the door and listening in, that something in this self-imposed stalemate between them finally shifts.</p>
<p>Jaskier is with Yen tonight, and Geralt thinks, later, wryly, that it was probably some kind of omen from Destiny. Their voices are low murmurs, occasionally interspersed with laughter, but it turns quiet and somber at some point over something he didn’t catch. At first.</p>
<p>“I used to think I knew him,” Jaskier says, confessing it like a dark secret. He sounds so terribly sad it makes Geralt want to run himself onto his own sword, because it’s <em> his fault. </em> “That I knew, no matter what words he did or didn’t say—that I knew what he was <em> trying </em> to say, what he was <em> actually </em>saying. Now...now, I’m not sure I ever did.”</p>
<p><em> You did, </em> Geralt thinks, jaw clenching. <em>Y</em><em>ou knew me better than anyone. No one else had ever bothered to know me like you did. </em></p>
<p>“For someone so smart,” Yen muses, “he’s very stupid.”</p>
<p>It makes Jaskier laugh. “He is. It’s part of his charm.”</p>
<p>“If you think stupidity is charming.”</p>
<p>“Well obviously I did.”</p>
<p>
  <em> Did. But not anymore. </em>
</p>
<p>“Obviously.”</p>
<p>It’s quiet between them for a moment, and Geralt strains to hear anything from beyond the thick door separating him from the one who had become his everything without him even realizing it until it was too late.</p>
<p>“Sometimes I wonder if there’s something wrong with me,” Jaskier murmurs, and Geralt's heart twists. <em> No, there’s not. You’re perfect. You were always too good for me. </em>“Something not quite right inside me. I mean,” he laughs again, but it sounds pained this time, worn out and tired, “why else, even after everything, would I still love him this deeply?”</p>
<p>Geralt's breath leaves him in a rush, like he’s been punched, or tossed into a wall by a beast.</p>
<p>“Love makes fools of us all,” Yen says. “It’s a curse—but also a blessing. If you’re into it. Personally, I prefer a good bondage kink, but to each his own. Martyrdom does it for some people, I hear.”</p>
<p>Geralt pictures the way Jaskier might try to hide a smile in her hair at the attempt at a joke. He always tried to hide his smiles when he didn’t want to admit Geralt had said something funny, dry as it was.</p>
<p>He wants that back, wants that easy friendship, that easy love Jaskier gave to him so freely.</p>
<p>“I want him back,” Jaskier says then, as if he can hear Geralt's thoughts from the hall. “He was never mine, but I want him back anyway.”</p>
<p><em> I was always yours, </em> Geralt thinks. <em> I just hadn’t realized how completely you had me until I forced you to let go. </em></p>
<p>He can’t listen to any more—he’s scraped raw at the confession, at the depth of Jaskier’s love for him even after how he’d treated him, at his own realization. As quietly as he can, he walks away from Jaskier’s room, though not without feeling a pull back to the door, back to his bard.</p>
<p><em> Not your bard, </em> he tells himself again. Then amends, <em> But maybe he would be again, if given the chance. </em></p>
<p>Geralt returns to his own room, checking in on Ciri as he goes, feeling some of the tension in his chest ease knowing his Child Surprise is sleeping safely close by. His resolve is set:</p>
<p>He’s got an apology to give that’s long past due.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>find me on <a href="http://twitter.com/troubadorer">twitter</a> and <a href="http://geraltofriviasleftbuttcheek.tumblr.com">tumblr</a></p></blockquote></div></div>
</body>
</html>